Templo y Exconvento de San Juan Bautista de Yecapixtla

Before the friars came, this spot held a teocalli to Yacapitzáhuac, a god of trade, which Gonzalo de Sandoval's troops destroyed in 1521. Franciscans then put up a small church that later burned, and in the 1530s the Augustinians took over the town: Fray Jorge de Ávila founded the friary around 1535, most of it went up between then and 1540 or 1541, and minor work carried on until 1586. Since 1994 it has been one of the Earliest 16th-Century Monasteries on the Slopes of Popocatépetl, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

From outside it is a textbook fortress friary, with a vast atrium behind a battlemented wall, four posa chapels at the corners and a tall, almost bare facade crowned with merlons. What sets it apart from its neighbours is the Gothic detail. A carved stone rose window about three metres across sits in the middle of the facade, cut by Indigenous craftsmen and one of very few of its period in Mexico; the main doorway bears the Augustinian and Franciscan coats of arms, and the side doorway is Plateresque. Inside, the apse has a star-ribbed Gothic vault, and the 16th-century sandstone pulpit with Gothic tracery is among the best-preserved pieces in the building. Three monolithic stones from the old teocalli survive in the baptistery.

The single-storey cloister has sixteen arches, a fountain and a two-part sundial, one half for the morning and one for the afternoon. The Sala De Profundis keeps well-preserved painted saints, and in the porter's lodge a crucifix over a skull stands for Calvary. The original Baroque altarpiece is gone: its twelve paintings of the apostles now hang in Cuernavaca cathedral, and today's high altar is 19th-century Neoclassical. The Augustinians formally lost the friary in 1754.

The 19 September 2017 earthquake damaged the complex, rose window included, and in September 2023 INAH still listed it as under works. The church is a working parish, so ask on site which areas are open. It stands next to the main square and the municipal market, where you can buy the cecina, salted dried beef, that Yecapixtla is known for.